Catch Your Breath
by more-than-words
Summary: She felt like she was still racing, still in the mode of flight or fight, caught in freefall... An exploration into some of Elizabeth's thoughts and emotions around 3.15 Break in Diplomacy and 3.17 Convergence. Two chapters.
1. Chapter 1

Hello! So I was meant to be writing fluffy smutty things about bees and mirrors (hopefully coming soon to some highly classy smut fics near you) but I got stuck and then this ended up happening instead. It's just a little look/venture into Elizabeth's panic/PTSD around the President Andrada is a Bastard episode and the Henry Got Shot episode... hopefully it's not awful. I'm super super nervous about this one though so if you hate it please tell me gently lol x

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 **Chapter One – Break in Diplomacy**

Waking on a gasp, Elizabeth jolted, pressing a hand against her chest in the hope of calming her racing heart. She blinked into the dark, trying to get control of her breathing, confused for a minute as to what might have woken her so suddenly in the middle of the night.

Then she remembered. _Andrada._

The memory of the shock of the incident had refused to leave her ever since the Philippines, and the churn of unease in her gut had been percolating since the very start of her meeting with President Andrada. It was making her head spin. She squeezed her eyes closed, willing the world to right itself.

She felt the phantom touch of an unwelcome hand against her body.

Eyes snapping open, she sat up abruptly, hands clenching in the bedsheets.

"Babe?" Henry's sleepy voice curled through the dark like a lifeline and Elizabeth grabbed onto it, turning towards him and reaching one hand back to seek out his. Shifting against the pillows, he took her hand, his fingers closing warmly around hers. "You OK?" he asked.

She opened her mouth to say _yeah_. Because she was, wasn't she? She was fine. Her knuckles ached where they had collided with President Andrada's face and her head was banging with stress and exhaustion, but she was fine.

Except for the fact that she wasn't.

Except for the fact that she could still feel him touching her and remember the creeping feeling from the very beginning of their meeting that something wasn't quite right. Except for the fact that she could still feel the adrenaline rushing in her veins from when she had reacted to punch him, and she still felt as though she was on high alert, waiting for an attack.

She was fine but not fine. "I –" she started, but she didn't have enough breath to complete the sentence, nor any idea of what she really wanted to say.

Andrada had assaulted her, and she wanted to hold him to account. Andrada had assaulted her, and she wanted to save the Singapore agreement. She didn't know how to do both, didn't know how to prioritise her duty to her job and the other women he had hurt and herself.

Because she had a duty to herself, too, as the Secretary of State and not. She had to do what she personally thought was right. She sucked in a noisy breath and felt the struggle of it in her chest as the faint strains of panic licked up her ribcage and tried to constrict her, tie her down and keep her in their grasp.

"I don't know what to do," she said, and it came out sounding loud in the dark, quiet bedroom.

Henry shifted forward carefully, slowly, and it was clear he could tell she was on the edge. His free hand wrapped gently around her forearm, his palm sliding against her skin soothingly. He sat close enough that she could feel him at her shoulder, feel the warmth and sense the security he offered even as he was careful not to crowd her in case she wanted the space. "What do you want to do?" he asked quietly.

Her face crumpled and she hunched over her knees, curling in on herself even as she rounded her back and tilted slightly to the right, the better to be close to her husband. "I have no idea," she said, the distress plain in her voice. It made her feel embarrassed, the fact that she was so uncertain. She thought that she should be sure. She thought it should be an easy decision. She shouldn't be deciding whether or not it was worth bringing a complaint against a powerful man who assaulted her. It shouldn't even be a question. And the assault shouldn't even have happened in the first place. It made her feel angry, too. "I want him to pay," she told Henry. "But I don't want him touching me to be the thing that I'm remembered for."

That was the thing, wasn't it? One of the things, anyway. Even if she spoke up, even if no one questioned her word over his, even if it played out in the best case scenario – that incident would be in her by-line. It would colour how people saw her, and Elizabeth didn't think she wanted to be considered a victim for the rest of her life.

Henry squeezed her hand. "There's plenty you'll be remembered for, babe. If you do decide to go public, it's not the only thing about you. People know that."

"If only I hadn't punched him." She said it without really thinking about it, more like musing out loud as she considered whether things might have been simpler if she hadn't broken the man's nose.

"And what would have happened if you hadn't punched him?" It may have had the hallmarks of a question from the ethics professor designed to get her think about the situation in a different way, to help her see things clearly, but Henry couldn't stop himself from sounding like the protective husband he was, the emotion in his voice hanging between them in the air even after he had finished speaking.

She turned to face him fully as she thought about it. "I don't know."

Henry's face was just about visible in the dim room. He swallowed audibly and nodded. "Exactly."

She flexed her hand in his, felt the twinge of bruised knuckles and an answering ache echoing up her arm as she put stress on the injured tendons. She knew what Henry was saying without saying: she didn't know what would have happened if she hadn't punched Andrada, didn't know what he had been thinking, how much worse it might have been. She had been acting on instinct to make him stop touching her and she thought that instinct had been right. She was sure that Henry thought that, too.

But it didn't make it any easier, or make her feel any better.

Pressure welled up behind her eyes and in her chest, the urge to cry surging through her whole body like her mind was demanding the emotion to be felt. Elizabeth willed it to go away, wanted nothing but oblivion for a little while before she had to come to a decision about what she wanted to do. She just wanted to sleep, wanted blankness.

She held her breath and screwed her eyes shut, willing the feelings to tamp back down, her stomach convulsing as she tried to get her adamant emotions back under control. She felt like she was spiralling, her thoughts scattered, snatches of coherence caught out of thin air before they flittered away again, leaving her with the confusion and distress and shock and the memory of a man's hand touching her and her hand colliding with his face and then the commotion of his security and her security entering the room, and everything had been so frantic ever since and she still felt frantic now, felt like she was still racing, still in the mode of flight or fight, caught in freefall and –

"Breathe." Henry's hand left her arm and moved instead to her back, pressing firmly between her shoulder blades. "Elizabeth, breathe."

She heard his voice but in her mind she was in Andrada's office, running through an endless stream of _what if_ scenarios; what if she hadn't turned her back, hadn't punched him, hadn't brought up the drones - her brain catching again and again on the real-life memory of the way it had felt when he had walked up behind her and touched her like he had some sort of _right_. Like a _bastard_.

"Breathe."

For some reason the increasing sense of indignation coupled with Henry's concerned, insistent voice worked, breaking through the fog of her jumbled thoughts and she found her body obeying, sucking in a loud, desperate breath. The air filled her lungs and she couldn't hold in the tears any longer, feeling them spill hotly down her cheeks in frustration and stress and lingering fear.

Elizabeth let herself collapse forward onto Henry's chest, her head landing against his collarbone as she sought out his comfort, her hands bunching in his t-shirt as he brought his arms up to hold her gently, like he was afraid of making her feel constricted. She dragged in a juddering breath and felt the spikes of it down her throat and into her lungs as she resisted the magnetic lull of the panic balled inside her.

The panic frustrated her, reminded her of other bad things, awful things, and it made her furious with Andrada for dragging it up again, for making her remember and forcing her to relive the choking feeling of everything spiralling out of control around her.

Henry's hand smoothed over her hair and his lips pressed softly to her forehead. "It's all right," he murmured. "It's OK."

She looked up at him, only just able to make out the shape of his features through her tears and the dark of the room. He gave her a slightly sad, rueful smile; Elizabeth got the sense that it contained an apology but she couldn't quite tell for what. She kept her eyes on Henry's face, the simple act of looking at him providing her with a hint of reassurance that gradually helped the tears to lessen and her rapid heartbeat to finally slow.

Damn, she was so tired. She didn't think she'd slept for more than an hour before she'd been startled awake by her own mind, and she hadn't managed to sleep at all on the plane home from the Philippines, too wired to relax. She just needed to sleep. She couldn't think clearly, make a decision about what to do, when she was so drop-down exhausted and still tingling with adrenaline. She couldn't think like the Secretary of State when she was so all over the place.

She thought that the fact that she thought that was telling, but she wasn't quite ready to unwrap it just yet.

She traced her fingers over Henry's chest. "I don't have to decide right now, right?" Part of her wanted to ask him what he thought that she should do, but she knew he wouldn't answer and she was glad that he would support her no matter what she decided. But she still felt the need for reassurance on at least some level.

"I think you're allowed to sleep on it," he said. He brushed his fingers over her hair. "Do you think you can sleep now?"

He asked the question like if she said _no_ , he'd sit up all night with her to keep her company. Such a good man. So different to Andrada. "Yeah," she answered after a pause, pushing herself up from his chest so she could roll over onto her left side, her preferred position for falling asleep.

There was a moment's hesitation before Henry turned towards her, and Elizabeth knew that the assault had spooked him, that it bothered him, too. Then his palm curved around her hip as he curled his body around hers, his leg sliding over hers to hold her to him. His touch was safety and security – and entirely welcomed. So completely different to the touch of the rogue President. No matter what she decided, she knew he'd have her back. Elizabeth took his hand to pull his arm closer around her and let Henry's rhythmic, steady breathing lull her own breathing into a more relaxed state. She stared into the gloom, feeling her husband gradually go slack with sleep around her. Her own eyelids were dragging down like magnets drawn irresistibly together. She thought that she could sleep now.

She thought that she might know what she was going to do about Andrada, but she wasn't yet ready to admit it. Maybe in the morning.

The knot of unease loosened slightly inside her, but it didn't completely unravel even as she fell fitfully into sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

You guys! Thank you so much for the positive response to the previous chapter, I'm SO glad you liked it. Here's some more anxious angst, I'm quite nervous about it but I really hope you'll like this one, too..?

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 **Chapter Two - Convergence**

She woke on a gasp.

Elizabeth felt herself flail uncontrollably in the bed, too late to stop it, her limbs feeling not her own for the several seconds it took her to wake up enough to realise where she was. Her legs caught in the blankets, constricting her just as an invisible band around her ribs constricted her chest and stole her breath, and she kicked out to try to get herself free.

Her foot collided briefly with warm skin, and the collision was followed by Henry jolting abruptly beside her before he moaned and swore and blinked surprised and pained into the dark. " _Fuck_ ," he said.

"I'm sorry." The apology was automatic and heartfelt, even as she continued to try to free herself from the blankets, struggling to get her fingers to sufficiently cooperate to push the fabric away from her legs. Guilt at causing Henry pain coupled with the memory of their unfinished fight from the hospital and the runaway panic that had forced her to wake. Her stomach roiled with the combination.

 _I think you should quit_.

She remembered walking into the hospital to find her husband with bullet wounds in his legs. Remembered Blake coming into her office with a look of hesitant necessity on his face after he had received an urgent call to tell her that Henry was in the hospital and she needed to come. Remembered the blind panic of those first few seconds that hadn't really left her since. _Ma'am, it's Henry…_

Her husband could have died and he didn't seem to get it, didn't seem to entirely get the impact it had on her to learn what had happened, to be told by his buddy from the FBI that his car had been shot at when he went to meet his asset, that the windows had been shot out and he was really lucky to have made it out in the shape that he did.

Lucky.

Elizabeth didn't feel as though they had been quite so lucky.

Not when Henry was lying next to her in pain. Not when all he wanted to do was get back into the game when the game had so recently nearly killed him.

Not when she'd had to seriously consider what she might tell the kids if their father was to be killed, and had lied to them about what had caused his injuries, and he didn't quite get that the bullet landing in his ankle wasn't very far off it landing in his head: he had been spared by a distance that could be measured in inches.

That wasn't lucky.

That made her feel angry, with him and with his job and with the cult that had the bomb and the drone with the serial number filed off just like the weapons that she was dealing with at the State Department. It made her feel angry, and it made the panic well in her chest in a way that it hadn't in a long time, in a way that had teased at her recently after the incident with President Andrada in Manila when he had put his hands on her against her will, but with an intensity that shocked her and that she didn't think she'd experienced since Iran, and maybe not even then. Because while Iran had affected her and haunted her for months to come, she had known throughout that her family was safe.

Even when she had been face down on the ground in Tehran while chaos reigned, or stood in Manila with her back to a predator, she had known her family was safe.

That hadn't been the case today.

She couldn't breathe. Couldn't see even though she had her eyes wide open.

She felt like she was suffocating in the dark.

"Babe?"

She knew that Henry was next to her but this was because of him. She couldn't lean on him to make it better, couldn't rely on him to fix things when he was recovering from bullet wounds and he was the cause of her pain and he didn't even seem to realise how much it made her hurt. All he saw was his asset, just like before when he was in too deep when Dmitri, and his frustration was at his inability to fix the situation rather than concern for what he had made her feel because of it.

Maybe it was unfair to blame him.

Trouble was, she needed someone to blame.

"I – I can't," she stuttered out, aware of the panic inside her like tightly knotted ball that was about to unfurl just enough to reach up to drag her back down with it and hold her tied tight there while she struggled against it, aware that even as she told herself to work against the now-familiar beginnings of a panic attack and resisted its pull she could feel herself slipping irretrievably towards it. A cruel joke.

A corner of her own damn mind was _laughing_ at her struggle and it made her shrink slightly into herself and slip again.

Then Henry's voice came soothing and soft from somewhere just behind her. "Hey." His hand touched her back gently.

Instinctively she jolted away even as a part of her knew it wasn't the rational thing to do. The rational thing to do would be to acknowledge her husband, to reach out to him and use him as something to hold onto, to hold tight onto him to stop herself from being dragged down into the fluster of her own mind and to reassure herself that he was OK, still with her. That the bullet had landed in his ankle and not his head. To take care of him and remind him that she loved him.

If only the panic blooming in her gut was over what had actually happened and not the thought that Henry might never stop, that he might keep going back and back to work that hurt him and snarled him up before spitting him back out – only one day it might just swallow him whole.

That was the thing she couldn't contend with. And the look on his face when he had challenged her to tell him to quit…

She had to get out, needed to get out.

Elizabeth scrambled to the edge of the bed, gasping for air that wouldn't come and physically pushing herself away from the one person she wanted to hold closer than anyone. She stumbled to a stand but her legs refused to carry her far, adrenaline burning through her veins like fear –

Or maybe it actually was fear.

She could feel it, hot and visceral, an inferno inside her and surrounding her and she could distantly hear Henry saying her name and could hear the pain in his voice and the shuffling on the bed as he tried to sit himself up, but her mind was wheeling too fast to slow down and face him.

She staggered down to the floor, pressing her back to the wall just below the window, feeling the cool plaster against her back and the ridge of the window seat at her neck and a cool draught that cut through the sweat on her body but did little to cool her temperature. She couldn't stop herself from shaking.

Even in her frantic state she could remember as clearly as anything the almost snarl on Henry's face as he had practically dared her to tell him to quit, like he was giving her a test he knew full well she couldn't pass, because when her husband was lying in front of her in a hospital bed with stitched up bullet holes in his body there was only one truthful answer she could give. And it wasn't the one he wanted to hear. It made her mad, made her so angry to think that there might be even a part of her husband that resented her concern for him, who felt that seeing his operation through to the conclusion was more important than keeping himself alive for his family. Maybe that wasn't how he had meant it to appear.

But he hadn't been the one who'd had to tell the kids the lie about what had happened.

She almost envied the kids; even if they hadn't entirely bought the story about the car accident, at least they'd had the option of believing in it so they didn't have to think about the alternative.

Elizabeth could feel her head spinning, could see lights sparking in front of her eyes even though the room was dim, could feel herself getting lightheaded as her lungs allowed her to draw only shallow breaths, barely even letting her sip on the air as her diaphragm constricted. Then light flooded her vision as Henry switched on his bedside lamp.

"You need to talk to me, babe," he said, and his voice was thick with physical pain and fatigue and worry. "Elizabeth. Look at me. Deep breaths, come on." He sounded frustrated with himself that he couldn't get out of the bed without help.

There was something tickling at the back of her mind, the initial swirl of a thought, something important, something truthful. Spinning just out of her grasp as she tried and failed to focus on anything other than snatching enough oxygen to keep herself conscious.

Henry shifted on the bed, using his hands to push himself towards the edge and it looked for a moment like he might be about to try to get up, but then his face blanched white as he moved his injured ankle and the hissing breath he sucked in was sharp enough to pierce the fog of Elizabeth's clouded panic and she snapped her head up to look at him.

The thought was clear now. She found enough breath to be able to say, "Henry, I can't lose you."

And that was it, wasn't it? That was the truth of it. The simple truth, really. That was what she had wanted to say when he had told her to tell him if she thought he should quit. She had wanted to say she didn't want him to die, that she needed him with her. But he had challenged her and forced her hand like he had been looking for the fight and she'd been struggling to find her way back from it ever since.

She just needed him to be safe. And not reckless. And not in too deep.

He always got himself in too deep and she was terrified that she didn't always know how to help him get out of it.

And now look what had happened.

Henry gave her a sad smile like he knew whatever he said wasn't quite going to cut it. "Babe, you're not gonna –"

"But I might," she cut him off. She drew in a breath, better able to regulate her breathing and control her thoughts and the physical ball of panic now that she'd spoken the truth of the matter. "If you don't stop, if something doesn't change, then next time –"

"There won't be a next time."

He sounded like he was trying to reassure her but it came across as placating, as a fob off that couldn't be substantiated. Given the fact he'd so recently had bullets shot at him maybe she should let him off, but Elizabeth could only control so much; in order to keep the panic at bay, she gave into the anger. "You can't promise me that! You don't know what's going to happen."

Feeling stronger now, Elizabeth pushed up from the floor to stand by the window, glad of the draught from the window as she felt her skin flush as she berated Henry. "Henry, you're supposed to be safe! I get that you need to manage your asset, I really do, I get that it's intense. But it shouldn't be this thing that takes you over like it does. You shouldn't find yourself desperate to get out of the hospital to get back to work when just hours ago you got shot in the leg. You shouldn't even have been shot in the leg in the first place!"

Unable to keep still as the words and emotion flowed out of her, Elizabeth paced the floor in front of the bedroom window, her steps punctuated by the loud thump of her heart in her chest. "You can't tell me to tell you if I think you should quit and then be surprised when I actually say it." She didn't see how it was that he didn't seem to get that. "And Henry, it's not exactly like you're a low profile guy. Even without being married to the Secretary of State, you're a public figure. That can make you a target and you don't have security when you're not with me. You can't just take these risks that get you hurt or put yourself in situations where this kind of thing can happen. And why the hell did you go in there on your own without any backup?!"

"I didn't think I'd need backup, I –" Henry shifted on the bed like he was trying to get comfortable or perhaps settle more securely into the brewing row, but then his face screwed up in pain as he jarred his knee and his hands shot out to readjust his injured leg, his skin simultaneously too pale and flushing red with exertion. He groaned as moving put more pressure on his injuries and he couldn't coordinate himself enough to get into a comfortable position.

Whatever she had been planning to say next dropped away. Elizabeth still had plenty of anger and plenty of hurt to work her way through, but seeing the look on Henry's face stalled the argument before it could really start and she felt a chill run through her at the sight of him in pain – the thought at how close it had been. How she couldn't lose him because of how much she loved him. "I'll help you," she said quietly, her body taking a second to get itself into gear before she stumbled around the bed to Henry's side. "Let me help."

She reached down to him to let him take her arms and use her as a support while he carefully shifted his position, feeling from the amount of weight he put on her the level of his fatigue from the injury and unexpected middle of the night wake-up call. She watched his face closely, aware he'd be able to read everything she was feeling on her own face as he looked steadily back.

"I'm OK," he said, when he had settled back against the pillows. He sounded like he believed it.

At least one of them did. "Yeah," she said, but her heart wasn't in it.

Her heart was still hurting too badly at the thought of it all being so much worse; she hadn't quite built herself up yet to being simply pleased that it wasn't.

Henry caught her hand in his as she stood up, pressing the back of her hand against his face and smiling when she turned her hand to cup his cheek gently in her palm. "Elizabeth," he started.

She looked at him with everything she felt. "Tomorrow," she said. "You need to sleep now. We can talk tomorrow."

He watched her for a moment before he nodded in defeat and turned his head to kiss her palm, his expression already drowsy. "I'll be here," he promised, and it sounded like he was promising more than that.

Elizabeth nodded in acknowledgement and reached out with her free hand to switch out the bedside light. Then she stood for a while in the dark with her hand on Henry's face, the better to feel him breathing.

The better to distract herself from the tight ball of dread in her gut that still lurked there, just waiting for another moment to unfurl.


End file.
